Sunday, April 24

This Day In History

• 1792   The French national anthem, ''La Marseillaise,'' was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
• 1800   Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
• 1877   Federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.
• 1898 Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America's ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
• 1915   The Ottoman Turkish Empire began a mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.
• 1916   The Easter uprising began when some 1,600 Irish nationalists seized several key sites in Dublin.
• 1953   British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
• 1962   The Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks, Calif., and Westford, Mass.
• 1968   Leftist students at Columbia University in New York City began a weeklong occupation of several campus buildings.
• 1980   The United States launched an abortive attempt to free the American hostages in Iran; eight U.S. servicemen died.
• 1986   Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, for whom King Edward VIII gave up the British throne, died in Paris at age 89.
• 1990   The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
• 1996   The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.
• 2002   After a meeting at the Vatican, American Roman Catholic leaders agreed to make it easier to remove priests who are guilty of sexually abusing minors.

Happy Birthday To

• 1743   Edmund Cartwright (inventor: power loom; died Oct 30, 1823)
• 1766   Robert Bailey Thomas (founder, editor: The Farmer's Almanac; died May 19, 1846)
• 1934   Shirley MacLaine (Shirley MacLean Beaty) (Academy Award-winning actress: Terms of Endearment [1983]; Emmy awards: Shirley MacLaine: If They Could See Me Now [1974], Gypsy in My Soul [1976], Shirley MacLaine... Every Little Movement [1980]; Irma La Douce, The Turning Point; sister of actor Warren Beatty)
• 1942   Barbra (Joan) Streisand (Grammy Award-winning Best Female Pop Vocalist [1963-1965, 1977, 1986], Best Songwriter [1977]; People, The Way We Were, You Don?t Bring Me Flowers; Academy Award-winning Best Song [1976: shared w/Paul Williams]: Evergreen [Love Theme from A Star Is Born]; Academy Award-winning Best Actress: Funny Girl [1968]; I Can Get It for You Wholesale, The Owl and the Pussycat, Hello Dolly, Funny Lady, The Way We Were, Yentl; actress/director: Yentl, The Prince of Tides, The Mirror Has Two Faces)